


Recurrent Echoes

by orphan_account



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: F/M, Post Series, in which I get a bit meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 08:04:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahiru dreams of other worlds, other lives, other versions of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recurrent Echoes

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by an idle musing on the popularity of AU/cosplay fic and art in fandom in general that got connected in my head with a conversation in The Sandman between two superheroes discussing how they dream about being actors in weird television versions of their lives.

Ahiru dreams.

Not every night, but often enough. Or perhaps it's the case that she does dream every night, but simply doesn't remember the ones that were boring or nondescript or that lacked a narrative. She thinks this because sometimes she awakes with only pieces of them remaining in her mind only to swiftly fade away, like slivers of ice melting in the summer sun. The other ones, though... the other ones are _good_.

In those dreams, she and Fakir are the stars, though they are not truly themselves. Rather, they find themselves playing other characters while still remaining in many ways the people they are in reality, or simply living other lives in other places. Her favorites are the ones where they end up taking the place of characters in the books he reads her every night before bed (for something must be read to her when he does not have a new story of his own, and he learned very early on that she does not like to go to sleep without having first listened to him sharing a tale with her). Events of the story become formed anew around them, and develop peculiarities of their own by virtue of being dreams. Once they were Robin Hood and Marian, another time Howl and Sophie, and still another they were Eowyn and Faramir, with Mytho and Rue making guest appearances as Aragorn and Arwen. (That one was particularly surreal - Uzura had replaced Merry, and attacked the Witch-King with a drum stick, and instead of striking him dead with a sword Ahiru transformed into Princess Tutu and did... something... that caused him to explode in a shower of pink flowers.) And on and on. She always wants to tell Fakir about these dreams, to see if he'll laugh at the absurdities, or blush at the fact that she dreams about him, or both, but all that ever comes out is a quack.

It was on an early morning, grey and still as the dawn approached, that she lay awake after one such dream as he still slept, and realized why they keep occurring. It isn't only because the stories Fakir reads her leave strong impressions on her, though that certainly factors into it. It is because she is searching. She is on a quest, by night, to find the two of them, to find the kind of happy ending in the dreaming that they were denied in the waking world.

It isn't because she's unhappy with Fakir. Not at all. To the contrary, there is much happiness in their lives together, and she wouldn't want to spend forever - as he promised her - with anyone else. However, one thing she's noticed from many of the stories he's read her is that even a thing like "happily ever after" comes with bumps and warts, depending on who you are and what you went through to get it. She knows it must be like that for Mytho and Rue, living and loving in their fairy tale world, but haunted by the raven's blood and everything that happened because of it. And so too is it for her and Fakir. She is mostly content, but at times cannot help missing being able to dance with him, to hold his hand, to embrace him as he embraces her. It's as warm in his arms as ever, but she misses having arms to wrap around him in return and hands to touch him with. Perhaps most of all, though, she misses being able to speak to him. For one thing, she hasn't yet gotten over the fact that she only realized her true feelings for him once she could no longer speak to him with words. 

Oh, he's aware of how she feels _now_ \- for she understands better than most people that there are ways to get your feelings across without words. It stings nonetheless, though, that she can't say anything back when he tells her he loves her. It isn't fair, she thinks. It makes sense - because _of course_ the girl who was fated to vanish in a speck of light the instant she spoke words of love to a storybook prince would then be barred from speaking them to this oh so real young man that she is in love with - but it isn't fair. And so she sets off, on journey after journey, to find a place where they can share the joys that they cannot have while awake, if only for a little while.

It isn't much, but it's enough.


End file.
